Former SAC manager's new site makes buying good artwork easier

James Tarmey, Bloomberg News

Published 9:09 pm, Thursday, March 7, 2013

Photo: Via Bloomberg

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Larisa Leventon, founder of the website www.dotdash3.com, poses for a portrait at an undisclosed location in this undated handout photo released to the media on Feb. 8, 2013. A former portfolio manager at SAC Capital, Leventon spent a year coding the site, which functions as a virtual gallery. Source: Larisa Leventon via Bloomberg
EDITOR'S NOTE: EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO SALES. less

Larisa Leventon, founder of the website www.dotdash3.com, poses for a portrait at an undisclosed location in this undated handout photo released to the media on Feb. 8, 2013. A former portfolio manager at SAC ... more

Photo: Via Bloomberg

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"Animate Me," an exhibition on dotdash3.com curated by Boshko Boskovic, is shown in this undated handout photo released to the media on Feb. 8, 2013. Shown playing in the front room: "We used to call it: Moon!," a video by Marko Tadic; in the back room, "Ristorante Italia," a video animation by Marco Rapparelli, and "Senza Titolo/Untitled," a stop-motion video by Matteo Fato. Source: dotdash3.com via Bloomberg
EDITOR'S NOTE: EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO SALES. less

"Animate Me," an exhibition on dotdash3.com curated by Boshko Boskovic, is shown in this undated handout photo released to the media on Feb. 8, 2013. Shown playing in the front room: "We used to call it: ... more

Photo: Via Bloomberg

Former SAC manager's new site makes buying good artwork easier

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Larisa Leventon, a former portfolio manager at SAC Capital Advisors in Stamford, wants to shake up the art market. Her new website, Dot Dash 3, allows artists and curators to take real artworks and place them in a virtual gallery of their own design.

Buyers can "walk" through the spaces, view sculpture, paintings and videos, and then buy with a click. There are six solo exhibitions and one group show on view.

Leventon, 41, met with me in a cafe in Greenwich Village, just days after her site went live. She told me about her plan to democratize the art world.

Q: Can you describe the features of your site?

A: For people looking to buy, it allows them to discover art in a novel way. For artists and curators, it gives them unlimited possibilities for how to create a space.

Q: How did you choose the artists?

A: I talked a lot with various curators and explored different programs. I was looking for emerging artists, but emerging artists with a good track record.

Q: Did your background in finance influence your approach?

A: Absolutely. As a portfolio manager, I invested in public equities. Every day I had to decide whether the stock was undervalued or overvalued. And it's not emotional -- you might like the management, the company and everything they stand for, but it all comes down to facts, to data, to the numbers.

When you transfer that to the art world, there's a lot of subjectivity involved: Do you go emotionally for the work? You also have to separate yourself when you look at the art.

Q: In what way?

A: There's art I might love, but then I look at certain other components, and the data, so to speak, of what's in front of me. You meet the artists, explore their thinking, you can make projections, say, if something that they've done is part of something bigger.

You look at art in the context of time: You can hop forward in 10, 20, 40 years -- is this work still relevant?

Art appreciation

Q: So you're not talking about art as a commodity?

A: Art is an asset, and some people look at it that way, but you have an appreciation component -- hopefully you're buying it to enjoy it.

Q: Did you leave SAC to start this site?

A: No, I left it to do my own fund, and my side project was that I just wanted to get some art because it was the first time that I wasn't occupied 24/7 with stocks.

Q: Who are your potential customers?

A: Anyone who buys art. Even people who don't buy art today.

I really wanted to make the price point affordable, so in the first exhibition the prices range from $300 to $12,000. What I was aiming to do was take the legwork out of a situation where someone says "I have $1,000 to spend on a piece of art, and I want to buy something that's meaningful."